


In Fair Verona (the no such thing as dignity remix)

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen, The Cage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Looking at the contemplative expression on Lucifer's face, Sam thinks that this has the potential to be either very bad, or completely awesome.</i><br/>Two humans and two archangels in the Cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Fair Verona (the no such thing as dignity remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In Fair Verona](https://archiveofourown.org/works/96823) by [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki). 



The thing about the Cage, apparently, is that it has no objective reality in the usual sense, being more of a plane of existence, really, than a tangible thing.

Sam has no idea what the two archangels see, but through his and Adam’s perceptions the Cage looks a lot like Sam’s favourite library, one he only visited a couple of times but which impressed him not only in the range of books it had, but with its furniture and architecture.

Whatever this might say about Sam and Adam respectively, at least they’ve got something to read.

Sam knew what he was getting into, or thought he did, anyway; the Cage isn’t exactly what he expected, it’s a lot nicer for one thing, and Lucifer and Michael are mostly too busy fighting to do anything but ignore the humans. And when they actually do pay attention, they’re weirdly polite in their dismissal. Sam had thought they might hold it against him that they’re contained for all eternity because of him, but okay, no, it’s given them time to work through their issues, apparently.

Adam, for all he didn’t expect this at all, seems mostly resigned and accepting of his fate. It’s probably not how he envisaged his afterlife either, but it could be worse. Sam finds he gets along fairly well with his younger brother: they have a lot in common.

Sam still misses Dean, but at least he’s got Adam.

Sam is reading the Complete Works of William Shakespeare when there is a yell almost immediately followed by a crash, as Michael and Lucifer slam into the far wall of the library, bringing three bookcases and a stepladder down on top of them with the accompanying sound of an avalanche of books.

“Know who they remind me of?” Sam asks idly, without even bothering to look up. He feels a slight twinge for the state of the books – what Dean would call his inner librarian – but knows from experience that everything will be restored to how it was in only a few minutes. 

“Two houses both alike in dignity?” Adam suggests, paying no more attention to the archangels than Sam, but glancing up from his Terry Pratchett novel to look at his brother. Sam snorts in amusement, because okay.

Adam has the same sense of humour he does, which is nice, he has to admit.

“Now you mention it, yeah. I was thinking less dramatic, though.”

Somewhere there is the _whump_ of masses of paper igniting from the blaze of angry Grace.

Neither Sam nor Adam pay it any attention.

“When Dean and I were kids, we spent a lot of time stuck in one place together with nothing to do but get on each other’s nerves. Every now and then it’d get to be too much and we’d beat the shit out of each other.”

Adam grins, easily seeing the parallels.

Then he pauses.

“They’ve gone quiet.”

Sam lifts his head quickly, realising that Adam is right. After a constant soundtrack of distant violence, the sudden silence stands out.

“Maybe one of them's killed the other,” Adam muses.

“I kinda hope not,” Sam replies. “The two of them fighting means they ignore us.”

“Sam.”

And just like that they’re not alone anymore, because Lucifer is standing just behind Sam’s shoulder, peering down. Sam yelps and pretty much levitates, because no matter how many times Lucifer does this, Sam _never_ gets used to the archangel appearing out of nowhere.

“What are you reading?” Lucifer asks, still trying to look over Sam’s shoulder even though Sam has darted forward and is clutching the book to him protectively.

“Um, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare,” Sam says, because a polite archangel is much better than an angry one. “Can you not do that?”

Lucifer smiles serenely at him, which Sam takes as a no. An amused no.

“Where’s Michael?” Adam asks, because he and Sam have sort of… appropriated an archangel each, or something. Adam likes to know where Michael is and what he’s doing, and Sam is the one who keeps an eye on Lucifer and talks to him on the less-than-common occasions when he and Michael have called a temporary ceasefire and he wants something to do.

Lucifer seems… weirdly fond of Sam, almost, like the pet hamster you didn’t really want for Christmas but sort of cared about in a distant _‘has-it-been-fed-today?’_ kind of way.

Sam would be pretty creeped out except that let’s face it, this is pretty mild on the Lucifer Creepiness Scale.

Besides, maybe if Lucifer has a vague interest in his wellbeing, it makes it less likely that some day an archangel will inadvertently fry him in a fit of rage.

Lucifer looks at Adam with a thoughtful expression, which makes Adam stare at him warily, because he isn’t as used to Lucifer as Sam is and finds Lucifer’s attention unnerving.

It doesn’t worry Sam at all anymore, which is all kinds of fucked-up.

“Michael is exploring the multimedia section,” Lucifer tells Adam, before his gaze inevitably slides back to Sam.

It’s like he’s the north pole and Lucifer is magnetised due Sam. His attention continually gravitates to Sam the moment Michael isn’t there to steal it.

Yeah. It’s weird. But that’s Lucifer.

“You were comparing the two of us to human children,” Lucifer says, because apparently angelic hearing works just fine even when there aren’t actually any ears or sound waves involved, and the archangel in question is on the other side of their subjective reality.

From the look on Adam’s face, he wants to ask ‘ _you mean you’ve been listening in the entire time we’ve been here?_ ’ but Sam has more experience with angels and knows that the answer is _yes_ so he just says,

“Yeah. Makes me wonder if I can convince our perceptions that this place is stocked with itching powder and crazy glue.”

Lucifer raises an eyebrow.

“Itching powder and crazy glue,” he says contemplatively, and because Sam knows him about as well as any human can, considering the inscrutability of the psyches of angels, he instantly gets the feeling that something with the potential to be either very bad or completely awesome has occurred.

“When we weren’t beating the shit out of each other, me and Dean used to get into prank wars,” Sam explains.

“Prank wars,” Lucifer repeats, slowly and thoughtfully, and disappears without warning.

Adam looks at Sam, and Sam looks back.

There’s a moment of mutual, wordless apprehension.

As it turns out, Sam’s comparison was more apt than he thought, because after heaps of time passes – there’s no way to tell how long, down here – Lucifer cheerfully ambushes Michael with an entire bucketful of itching powder, and calmly pops away to watch discreetly from behind a bookcase as Michael scratches and coughs and roars furious invectives at his younger brother.

Lucifer is smiling. It’s a frightening sight.

“Sam,” Lucifer says, while Sam is drinking a cup of the perfect pot of coffee that _he_ hadn’t decided existed, but thought that Adam must have, “tell me more about prank wars.”

It takes Michael a while to catch on; at first he simply rages around in infuriated confusion, but Adam eventually approaches him and explains, and after that Lucifer finds himself covered in golden glitter which Michael says complements his grace nicely, and it’s _on_.

Sam and Adam barricade themselves in Meeting Room 1 and watch their favourite movies, only venturing out occasionally to see how things are going.

(Lucifer loves seeing Michael in a state of indignity, and Michael enjoys punishing his arrogant little brother, as far as Sam can tell.)

It’s when he and Adam find that all the English-language novels have been replaced with badly-written porn novels (Sam can _tell_ who’s responsible for what; Michael’s are boring and unimaginative, while Lucifer’s make Sam wish he could scrub his memory clean with bleach) that the prank war extends to include the humans as well, and it’s only when Sam and Lucifer end up floating in a sea of green slime in a stairwell that there’s a temporary cessation of hostilities.

It’s while Sam is in the shower trying to scrub green goo out of his hair that he remembers Adam quoting Romeo and Juliet, and he cracks up, because there’s nothing dignified about either archangel now, pranking the hell out of each other.

“Adam and Michael are roasting marshmallows,” Lucifer says, appearing in the bathroom with him.

“LUCIFER! GET THE FUCK OUT!” Sam shrieks at the top of his lungs, because seriously, _boundaries_.

Lucifer just smirks and there’s suddenly a camera, and Sam can only gape in horror as the flash goes off.

“ _LUCIFER!_ ” Sam bellows, but Lucifer is already gone, and more importantly he’s taken the instant camera with him.

Sam groans.

“You know,” he tells the three of them when he emerges from the bathroom, “when I came up with the plan to jump into the Cage and take Lucifer with me, I never expected I’d have to worry about perverted angels taking photos of me in the shower.”

They just laugh at him.

“Admit it,” Adam grins. “This is much better.”

And yeah, Sam has to admit. It kind of is.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Out of the many stories EllieMurasaki has written, _In Fair Verona_ grabbed me because it was a neatly-encapsulated story that both amused me and had a lot of potential for expansion. I consider where I've gone with my remix to be the logical extension of the original concept.


End file.
